The present invention relates to the control of a telecommunications device and to apparatus therefor.
Human communication is an extremely complex process in which a variety of different factors influence success or failure. In conversation, for example, it is not only the specific words chosen by the contributors which affect the outcome; it is also tone of voice, facial expression and body language, and even ‘ritual rights to address another’ that might matter. Each, in varying degrees, greatly influence the receptiveness of each participant; each may even affect an individual's willingness to participate in conversation in the first place. In short, conversations are not easily commenced or ended nor are they merely about the exchange of words: tone, facial expressions, body language, rules related to who can talk to whom about what and when, as well as much else beside, all can be crucial from the initial salutation through to the farewell.
If this holds true for face to face conversation, then it is equally important with remote communications, such as enabled through voice or video telephony. Unfortunately, users of such technologies are at a particular disadvantage. They are provided with few, if any, methods for conveying some of the visual, auditory and bodily signals that define intended tone, for example. Moreover, though some of the social proprieties relating to ‘who can call who’ are facilitated by such things as caller line identification, this is not always available and, in any case, these proprieties are often undermined by lack of information about tone. This is a particularly noticeable deficiency at the start of a call when the person initiating the communication has no way of presenting themselves and setting the tone until the conversation is underway. This why so many telephone calls start with discussion of who is making the call, why it is being made, the frame of mind of the caller and so forth, all of which are in effect conversational topics acting as surrogates for other, non-verbal ways of communicating tone and deploying rights of contact.
For instance, when some one calls on a mobile phone, the ring tone and other properties of the receiving device actuated by the receipt of the call remain solely in the control of the owner of the receiving device. Hence a caller can not affect how they are presented to the person receiving the call: they cannot convey, through the ring tone, for example, urgency or anger, friendliness or confusion: all these tones are subsumed under one ring tone. Nor can they ensure that the recipient knows who is calling, unless that recipient has correctly entered a name in their mobile phone's address book associated with the caller line number. Hence, what is in effect a human summons of many different hues is transformed by mobile telecommunications technology into a single hue provided with one anonymous ‘face’ consisting of a ring tone and a telephone number. This makes mobile telecommunication, either voice or video, very unlike normal communication between people face to face. In a phrase, the one allows expression before words are spoken, the other does not.
The consequence is that though the technology might have been designed with the hope of bringing people closer together, in practice that very technology pulls them apart by diminishing what people can communicate. This was not the intention of those who designed the technology, of course. Nevertheless, in order to improve the ease and value of the technology, and so of remote communications, there is a need to enable the richness of expression and meaning described above, as there is too a need to associate this with social systems of propriety. Doing so will be of benefit at all stages of a communication, from commencement through to termination.